The Major Transitions in Evolution
This last year, having completed work on the systems science textbook, I have immersed myself in the emerging and growing literature on this subject. Evolution as used here refers to the universal dynamic of change, specifically the increase in levels of organization and complexity1 over time (McIntosh, 2012; Morowitz, 2004). I devoted an entire chapter to the phenomena of auto-organization and emergence as underlying the process of evolution involving selection, descent with modification, competition, and cooperation. The latter was covered in the following chapter (the two chapters form a unit section titled Evolution). My co-author and I sought to present the concepts in the most general forms possible, as applicable to all levels of organization in the universe. The reason is that there is emerging a general understanding that evolution is much more than just the neo-Darwinian biological paradigm that has dominated thinking and investigations for the past hundred years or so. The theories of evolution have been evolving! One of the most exciting discoveries (still somewhat tentative but gaining evidence) contributing to this evolving understanding is that evolution itself has been evolving! That is, as new levels of organization emerge, the mechanisms of evolution within the new level seem to be accelerated compared with what came before. For example, I have already written about the new thinking about evolvability and how it may have played a role in the survivability of mammals and birds after the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg, formerly the K-T) mass extinction event. Over the past several decades considerable work has shown that evolution in all its forms is far more complex, subtle, and operates in levels of organization just as the physical universe is evolving into more complex, subtle, and leveled organization due to evolution. The philosophical implications are deep.
The emergence of higher levels of organization is now recognized as a sequence of transitions that occurred as a result of increasing complexity within the Universe. That means that as the complexity at any one level of organization reached a critical point in complexity of structures and functions (e.g. when proteins and nucleotide polymers were sufficiently large and interacted in autocatalytic cycles and were associated with bi-layer fatty acid complexes — membranes) many of these structures/functions combined to create new super-structures with new super-functions that, in effect, created a whole new level of organization (formation of protocells). Figure 1 shows a summary of the major transitions where higher complexity emerged from lower levels in the hierarchy (Calcott & Sterelny, 2011; Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, 1995).
Figure 1. A summary of the major transitions leading to levels of organization in the evolution of the Universe. The presumptive “Big Bang” is thought to be the origin of ordinary mass and energy. Nucleons evolved through the interactions of gravity and nuclear fusion processes in supernovae explosions. Once the Universe cooled sufficiently for stable atoms to interact within nebular clouds and in the form of formed mass bodies such as planets (like the Earth) chemical reactions led to a large variety of molecules and crystalline structures. The combinations of atoms created more complex structures that could then further interact in a pre-biological evolution of precursors for life.
At each level in this summary we see that the complexity of structures that auto-organize increases as we go up the hierarchy. For a more complete explanation of the process of auto-organization, emergence, and evolution of complexity, please see my working paper, “Does Evolution Have a Trajectory?” Here I am more interested in what that trajectory looks like, standing back and looking at the whole of the history of the Universe.
Figure 1 illustrates what we mean by levels of organization and the blue dashed lines represent the transitions from a lower level to the next higher level. For example pre-biotic chemical evolution involved the generation of the major molecular constituents of life from non-organic sources. The origin of life problem is far from solved in detail, but the broad outlines of what compounds needed to be synthesized in advance of protocell organization is understood well enough to be confident in saying that the pre-life conditions could create a milieu in which further auto-organization of those component parts led to protocells with heritable, stable genetic material and the triggering of neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism. The latter increased the rate of increase in complexity above what had been the case in all time before (see Figure 2 below). And eventually, with the emergence of chromosomes and stable energy-gradient consuming metabolisms, true cells (e.g. eubacteria) organized and set off a new level of evolution.
Notice a few interesting dynamics indicated in Figure 1. The obvious (red arrow pointing upward) is the increase in complexity with the increase in levels of organization. But there are two other very intriguing dynamics we should note. The first (green arrow pointing up) starting in biological evolution continues upward. This is to recognize that the emergence of social evolution (cooperation among biological entities to give rise to higher organisms) did not actually bring biological evolution to a halt. Biological evolution, however, is seen as halting any chance for pre-biotic developments. The reason given is that bacteria, especially, would instantly consume any non-organic but carbon-based molecules that might form by accident. So the chance that a second or third pre-biology could get a hold is essentially nonexistent. This is similar to the slowdown and cessation of nucleonic evolution due to the limits of energies needed to fuse ever more complex nuclei. The depletion of lighter weight elements in making heavier elements simply acted as a negative feedback to bring further evolution to a halt.
Social emergences and evolutions (e.g. endosymbiosis giving rise to eukaryotes, colony cell specializations giving rise to multicellular forms, and higher forms of social organizations) did not halt biological evolution, but instead enhanced it (Bourke, 2011). But then we get to cultural evolution, and in particular that of human cultures, which especially includes science and technology. Suddenly we see a re-triggering of lower level evolution due to human intervention. We have generated nuclei we don't (or haven't) find in nature. We have created chemical compounds impossible to auto-synthesize in nature. We are on the verge of creating artificially constructed protocells and even cells. We have cloned all kinds of creatures that would not have happened in natural selection. We have created chimeras from multiple species. It seems as if humans and their scientific cultures have restarted the lower levels of the complexity hierarchy and we have yet to see what may come of further evolution taking place in those levels. Most people look with great horror on this development, claiming we are creating monsters that will destroy us. They may be right. But there is another (non-humanistic, but perhaps more objective) way to look at it. We are simply unwitting agents in the Universe's once-more increase in the rate of evolution of complexity. We are the Universe's way to increase its own evolvability. We, as a species, may be victims of this transition. But the Universe as a whole may actually achieve a whole new level of organization as a result.
Figure 2 is a very rough approximation of the rate of increase in complexity as a result of Universal evolution. It looks exponential. A central question raised by this view would be, how much more complexity is possible? The answer may lie in realizing that the perspective shown in Figure 2 is from us residing on this planet. Change the scale, by stretching the time line out many more billion years into the future and the complexity measure up by many orders of magnitude and the steep rise we see from Earth might just look like a slower sloping exponential (still). In other words, we can't let our earth-bound and species-centric bias influence our perspective on what evolution is really all about.If we can help it.
Figure 2. Overall complexity of the Universe appears to have grown at an exponential rate (albeit very small exponent). This is a very rough graph that shows how levels of organization emerged and the evolution of complexity then appears to have greatly increased. Other authors have suggested that the graph should depict a step function as the emergence phase might have been rapid and the evolution phase slower.
Cultural Evolution
Auto-organization, the emergence of new levels organization, and the evolution of structure and function with those levels depends entirely on the flow of energy. Energy flowing from a high potential source of the right kind of kinetic form to a low potential source powers the processes and their adaptation (maintenance of function in spite of environmental variations) and evolution (changes in form and function to maintain continuity into the future) over time and space. The sun has been the main source of high powered energy flows in the form of electromagnetic radiation (light). Early life may have used less powerful chemical potential gradients to extract energy but once photosynthesis was discovered the power of light was exploited to synthesize new structures and perform new functions (of course life based on chemical energy sources can still be found today, for example at thermal vents in the deep ocean). The evolution of life has since largely been driven by the steady flow of energy to the earth from the sun and the eventual degradation of the energy to waste heat due to the many work transformations done by the biosphere.
Life evolved us. We and our late progenitors found new ways to raise the level of organization above that of life itself. Through the evolution of our large brains we became capable of invention of artifacts that allowed us to exploit sources of solar energy other than food. We gave rise to a new complexity — humans and artifacts that would then evolve together, that is co evolve. The artifacts increased human access to high powered energy flows which then allowed humans to gain greater ecological fitness in a much higher number of environments. Even though some people think evolution of our biology has ceased with our ascension to the top of the food chain and our technological ability to keep genetically deficient individuals alive prosthetically (e.g. glasses), in fact we are not the exact same species that emerged from Africa some 60-65 thousand years ago. Racial differences attest to the on-going force of selection for traits commensurate with different environments. This cannot be denied. So our culture(s) which made dispersion across the planet feasible has recursively acted on us to push biological evolution, albeit at a normal pace for biological evolution, further along.
On the other hand, culture has evolved at an exponential rate due to the continuing discovery of higher and higher potential energy gradients. We cannot eat hydro power, or fire, or explosions. These forms of energy conversion from potential to kinetic could not feed directly into our biological bodies to drive some kind of super-biological evolution. But they can be exploited in machines that we invented as we explored what possible ways we could exploit water, wind, animals, tree, coal, oil, and nuclear fission. These high power energies can effect our minds, inspire our inventiveness, and as a result we act as the selective forces that play the evolution of culture. With enough excess energy available our artifacts need not be only functional (practical) but esthetic as well. Indeed a whole category of artifacts are only meant for esthetics. Culture evolved rapidly because of the availability of energy and the coupling between biology and artifacts through the human mind.
This raises an unpleasant thought. If evolution depends2 of increasing availability of higher power then we face a very unusual condition in the not-so-far-off future. Fossil fuels being the main source of power now (over 80% globally) and finite in abundance are starting to be harder to extract as a result of their depletion. This is reflected in the rising costs of extraction and decreasing marginal returns on investments and production. Eventually, and I suspect within the next decade, the cost-benefit ratio for fossil fuels will simply go to one (1) with the result that the energy flows to our culture (and hence to our biomass maintenance) will fall to zero from these sources. Cultural evolution will slow to a halt and afterward go into devolution (in the best case scenario).
Of course, humans will not react well to this decline of what they had come to know as “progress.” Their reactions will more likely cause a catastrophic decline of the further coevolution of mankind-cultures leaving whatever is left of the former with naught but the stone tools of our fore bearers of some fifteen thousand years ago.
At first glance this would seem to go against the picture of evolution producing ever higher levels of organization in these major transitions. From our perspective this looks like an end of evolution rather than a transition to higher evolution. But that is just from our perspective. Had the dinosaurs been at all sentient and knew something about progress they would have surely thought their extinctions would have been an end to the emergence of higher levels of organization. After all they were the norm. To their way of thinking they probably could not imagine the world going on without them. Wouldn't progress have simply meant more diversity in dinosaur species?
But while a power reset to a lower value will degrade cultural evolution in its current form, it does not follow that all of humanity is lost. The bulk of human biomass does depend on technology to keep it alive. Without modern agricultural industry, more humans will go hungry and starve to death. Others will act violently to save themselves as best they can. However it is not a given that all human life will come to an end. There is some non-zero likelihood that some humans will survive and figure out how to maintain in spite of the collapse of societies and the radical climate changes that are ahead. Human beings are, after all, enormously adaptive. And all that is needed to provide the future basis of continuing biological and “mental” evolution of the genus Homo is a high capacity to adapt.
An Impending Transition
When considering some of the conditions prevailing prior to previous transitions it is intriguing to realize that most were in response to heavy stresses acting on components that would eventually combine to create the new structures at a new level of organization. In other words, the emergence of a new level, and the mark of a transition, were a result of strong selection against components but for combinations that were more adaptive than any one component by itself. Synergy is the result of components acting cooperatively to accomplish what no one, or even the aggregate of components, could do alone. Though much research must be done to validate this, a picture has been developing of the fortuitous symbiotic relations that developed between prokaryotic cells that gave rise to the eukaryotic forms. The process has been termed “endosymbiosis.” There is a suggestion that larger prokaryotes ate smaller ones but failed to digest them and they stuck around, having found a suitable safe haven. We don't know exactly what the conditions were for some large prokaryote to engulf, say the precursors of mitochondria or chloroplasts (plastids that retain a significant working genome of their own), but we do know that relations between all of those precursors could have developed gradually and probably proceeded through a colony-like association before actual internalization. Mitochondria precursors, for example, might have supplied large eubacteria colonies with ATP supplements to their chemoenergy sources. Also what we know is that mutualistic relations develop between species when there is an advantage to cooperate and that such an advantage increases the fitness of both. And, finally, we know that such relations will be selected for even when there is negative selection operating on the individual members of one or the other species.
The growing abundance of free oxygen in the atmosphere and hydrosphere was just such a dramatic and increasing selective force. Respiration requires oxygen to “slow burn” carbohydrates to release energy packets able to supply synthesis machinery (e.g. ribosomes). Oxygen also kills anaerobic bacteria quite nicely so selection for oxygen tolerance was quite strong. It would have been greatly increased by the inclusion of a nice little bug that could fix oxygen to carbon and hydrogen while producing wonderful little batteries for use by other organelle (also likely prokaryote derived).
The transitions seem always to involve the evolution of sociality3. The new level of organization always involves the new kinds of interactions between socialized new forms. Molecules can undergo chemistries that atoms by themselves are incapable of. For example, protein catalysts (enzymes) are able to facilitate so many difficult reactions (with large energy hurdles) that no single atom, or even small molecules, could manage. The chain of amino acids in an enzyme cooperate by forming complex shapes that have kinetic properties suited to perform their collectivized function.
Even the origins of human sociality on the plains of Africa seems to have been in response to strong selection forces. Humans gave up claws and jaws in favor of posture and voice. They were no match for the carnivores of the environment. They were not even built well for being carnivores. They needed to evolve social mechanisms to support acting as a unit for hunting, gathering, protection, etc. The stresses of climate and competition acted to select those groups of humans (tribes) that best cooperated within the group. They were in competition not only with other species, but with conspecific tribes as well. The ones that did the best job of intra-group cooperation won the competition.
The reduction in the power available to human culture may mean an end to the kind of culture we have become used to. But it does not mean an end to human evolution. As long as there is sunlight some humans can and will survive, even thrive. But the stresses of survival in the brave new world could easily mean that the evolution of a new, greater level of socialization is in the offing. Current human culture represents what amounts to the first baby steps toward the kind of eusociality previously accorded to species like ants and naked mole rats. Our role in this transition to a sentient form of eusociality is merely as a transient species having some of the characteristics of both a semi-social (e.g. other apes) and a eusocial species. The latter is evidenced in the fact that we can, under nominal conditions, form strong cooperative associations even with strangers to accomplish some common goal. Evidence of the former is the level of cutthroat competition, selfishness with profits, and greed that are displayed by too many of our kind today. This is our ancestral reptilian brain at work. The cooperativeness that we display in our near eusociality is the result of our neocortex and particularly the large prefrontal cortex (orchestrated by the patch right behind the eyebrows called Brodmann area 10). We are the transition.
Humanity finds itself in the same kind of predicament early life (anaerobic bacteria) faced when those devilish little blue-green algae (actually cyanobacteria) started defecating oxygen! The impending stresses from reducing power flows and increasing climate changes promise to put us in dire need. We have to evolve or go extinct.
A Blessed Bottleneck
Transition in the biosphere is coming. There is no way to avoid it. There will be another great die-off and many species will exit the stage of life. We could be one of them. But I honestly don't think we will. Rather I think the course of evolution already laid, its trajectory, will not be thwarted entirely. Our culture is not the defining property of our biological species, our capacity to build a culture based on cooperation is, however. The extent and kind of culture that humans can build will, of course, depend on the power available to them, but it is the act and process of building some culture that is the essence of our biology.
Regardless of who gets through the bottleneck event (roughians or sapients) I'm not sure it will make a difference. The forces that will drive the evolution of future species of Homo, I conjecture, will favor greater cooperation not less. Furthermore, the brain structural seeds of circuits that will support cooperativity are already sown. As future generations experience mutations that improve those circuits they will differentially succeed in the competition with poor cooperators by building adaptive cultures that can deal with the contingencies of the future.
The history of universal evolution is one of transitions to greater cooperativity (sociality) reacting to increases in stresses at lower levels. Think of it like what Per Bak calls self-organized criticality. A pressure builds up in a non-linear complex system. Mostly small evolutionary events occur. Every once in a while a middle sized event (e.g. origin of a new genera or loss of an old one) occurs. And on very rare occasions a really large event, a transition event, takes place, and nothing is the same afterward. I think this is where we are headed.
Do not weep for humanity friends. We are just players in a universal drama. It is a story of redemption even if the protagonist dies. Sentience will continue up the curve in Figure 2 for a ways more. It can happen not by increasing cultural complexity per se, but by raising the social complexity bar. After the transition (say ten thousand generations from now!) the cultural + social complexity can once again increase. Power alone is not the only thing needed for post-transition complexity. Mind, sentience, cleverness mediated by sapience is the key. Eusapient beings in that distant future may discover new sources of power to drive artifact complexity once again. But they will not be lured into creating complexity for its own sake (novelty and convenience). Nor will they be so foolish as their predecessors (us) to waste their environment in pursuit of that kind of complexity.
How Could Anyone Know What Will Come?
No one does, of course. I am speculating, to be certain. But consider this. The major patterns of universal evolution are becoming clear to us. Those patterns repeat themselves in different forms, but systemically they are the same. Competition drives inter-specific and conspecific incremental evolution. Cooperation emerges in response to the build up of competition-based and environmental forces (like climate). I have no idea what the details might look like, but I think I can see a broad picture emerging that gives me considerable hope. And joy. Humans in our current form will absolutely go extinct eventually. But, if I am right, it will be the death of a species giving birth to a new species that is more fit in the context of the planet as a whole system. It would be sad indeed if the extinction of Homo sapiens was the end of sentience on this planet, given the potential for that sentience to rise above mere sapiens' cleverness. It is certainly one of the outcomes possible but it would seem to me to have been such a waste of time and resources. Evolution has a history of purchasing new opportunities on the expenditures of prior species, genera, and higher. It has inexorably led to greater information/knowledge processing and complexity of organisms throughout its history. Why would it not be so in the future?
Indeed, as long as the sun produces an energy flow commensurate with life (light energy) there is still time for evolution to produce a much more highly capable sentience than are we. There is no law of nature to prevent it. We won't be able to know what that sentience looks like (humanoid presumably). But I think we can take comfort in knowing that if it exists it will be the new and better us.
References
Bourke, Andrew F.G. (2011). Principles of Social Evolution, Oxford University Press, New York.
Calcott, Brett & Sterelny, Kim (2011). The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology), The MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Maynard Smith, John & Szathmáry, Eörs (1995). The Major Transitions in Evolution, Oxford University Press,
McIntosh, Steve (2012). Evolution's Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins, SelectBooks, Inc.
Morowitz, Harold J. (2004). The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, Oxford University Press, NY.
Sawyer, R.Kieth (2005). Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
Simon, Herbert (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Footnotes
1. Complexity as used here refers to an indexed value based on the depth of the hierarchy, after Herbert Simon (1996). As components form stable complexes at lower levels, new interactions between those complexes emerge and new laws of organization take shape. This forms a hierarchy of realized complexity. The depth of the hierarchy (as shown in Figure 1) provides a measure of complexity.
2. And here I include the effects of population growth as part of the equation of evolution because larger populations support a possibly higher variability in genetics and ideas, thus the fitness of mankind plus culture has to lead to higher reproductive success for all!
3. Sociality is the term being applied to all forms of cooperation taking place at all levels of organization in the complexity hierarchy. Atoms are social in combining to make molecules. Molecules are social in combining by various bond forms to create complex shapes (like enzymes). Cells are social when the communicate with one another and form tissues, and so on.
" The origin of life problem is far from solved in detail, but the broad outlines of what compounds needed to be synthesized in advance of protocell organization is understood well enough to be confident in saying that the pre-life conditions could create a milieu in which further auto-organization of those component parts led to protocells with heritable, stable genetic material and the triggering of neo-Darwinian evolutionary mechanism."-GM
Where do you get this confidence George?
In the lab you can set up the proto-life conditions you THINK might have existed in the "primordial ocean", and even go so far as to drop in all the molecules necessary for life as well under the assumption that they were produced somehow in sufficient concentration to all self-organize.
Even if you do all that AND provide an energy source and gradient, you can't get self replicating organisms out of it.
So why are you so confident that spontaneous generation fo life is possible simply from thermodynamic principles? There is no real evidence of any sort for this.
RE
http://doomsteaddiner.net
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | November 28, 2013 at 10:12 PM
"The reduction in the power available to human culture may mean an end to the kind of culture we have become used to. But it does not mean an end to human evolution. As long as there is sunlight some humans can and will survive, even thrive..."
I hope you are correct. Apologies if this has been hashed over previously, but what about concerns, voiced in some quarters, concerning the several hundred nuclear power plants distributed around our planet? While said "survivors" huddle 'round their campfires, what will prevent unmonitored nuclear plants from going critical and, IMHO, potentially reducing post-bottleneck human numbers to .... zero?
Posted by: D. Aaron Fiore | November 28, 2013 at 10:51 PM
But, if the environment were to stay the same, evolution would stop (I am discounting sexual and cultural selection as the main drivers of human evolution). Evolution only provides a species fit enough to thrive in a particular environment at a particular time.
The environment, obviously, does not stop changing, therefore, evolution does not stop altering species to fit those changes.
That is the extent of evolution though. There is no plan to produce a super-species of humans.
If the coming new environment precludes this new species then it will not even evolve, let alone thrive.
Posted by: Paul H. | November 29, 2013 at 02:35 AM
Is there evolution if there is no time? How the physical new paradigms affect the conceptual structure of biological evolution? Psychologically, is there change if there isn't verbal thought? If you want, take a look of this book, you will perhaps get some original ideas to go on questioning, just a different aproach. A sample in: http://goo.gl/IUlSMu
Posted by: Ulises_Jofre | November 29, 2013 at 03:35 AM
George: great read! I have come to the conclusion that sapience is a made-up quality, an imaginative myth, a quality it would be nice if we had, but don't in any appreciable or meaningful number to make any difference to our coming extinction by our own hand. Thanks for supplying the scholarly working papers from the last thread.
We're a creative species - oh we can invent and find ways around limiting factors from the environment - but we aren't wise enough to see them for what they are, protecting mechanisms.
We simply refuse to accept the idea that we're nothing special and have our time on the earth like all other species and then we're "shown the door." All the so-called progress (especially the complexity) we've attained over our past millennia have led to the over-shoot, biosphere degradation and habitat destruction that will be our un-doing in the not-too-distant future, according to prevailing scientific evidence (like all the self-reinforcing feedback loops that will continue to make the planet less able to sustain our species in the coming years - on top of all the natural forces like solar influences, volcanic activity and the social collapse of human civilization).
Thanks for taking the time to consider my point, even though you disagree. I appreciate your being grounded enough to allow dissent, and, like all the other visitors here, enjoy reading your thoughts - even if they seem like science fiction at times.
Posted by: Tom | November 29, 2013 at 07:48 AM
@RE,
Your description of what we "can do" sounds so 1960s! A lot has been going on since Miller-Urey, et al. Some of the references I gave have some updates. But I will add two more for you to look at and see the evidence for yourself:
Schneider, Eric D. & Sagan, Dorion (2005). Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life, The University of Chicago Press. [covers a lot of these hypotheses from the standpoint of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and energy flow.]
Morowitz, Harold J. (1992). Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis, Yale University Press. [A bit older than the Morowitz reference I gave, but full of much more details at the molecular level.]
There is also a rich literature on RNA-world for the origins of both enzymatic action and autocatalysis pre-proteins. But there is still a gap in understanding the precise mechanisms involved in coupling the origins of a replicable genetic code and the early metabolic cycles. Some recent work on coupling early bi-lipid membranes, ribozymes, and minimal autocatalytic cycles involving polypeptides on pyrite surfaces driven by sulfur REDOX reactions (e.g. deep thermal vents today).
If you have recent literature to the contrary please advise.
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@D. Aaron F.,
I am no expert on nuclear plant operations (though I was on a nuclear sub in the Navy!), but it is my understanding that even in the worst case scenario, where all of these plants fail containment, the ensuing radiation contamination would not be much greater than the Earth has experienced several times in the past due to losses of ozone (for example). In fact, I have read an analysis that suggests the increased radiation (of course at some distance from the source of the contamination) could increase the mutation rates in many species which would provide much more likelihood of beneficial new traits!
Our visions of a nuclear contamination meltdown come mostly from conceptions of Armageddon (nuclear winter) scenarios of when the bombs (very dirty by comparison to nuke plants) fell. That kind of scenario would, indeed, be devastating. But if we look at Chernobyl, as an example, we don't see the same kind of simple radiation die-off. In fact the area surrounding (at a distance) the disaster is quite alive. There are, of course radiation-related diseases and mutations have been reported. But the level of harm seems no greater than what we would expect from a natural selection force.
For my part I remain skeptical of claims that all of these plants would be left decommissioned and subject to melt-down, for starters. And those that might, I remain skeptical that it will result in annihilation of all life around. I await evidence to the contrary!
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@Paul H.,
I don't think I implied a "plan". That would imply an intelligence-based teleology. There is no implication of a plan in recognizing a trajectory and pattern (of emerging levels of organization) in universal evolution. Even some evolutionists are getting comfortable with talking about a telenomic purpose without needing to imply a supreme creative intelligence driving the process.
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@Ulises,
Thanks for the link and suggestion.
Bioquestions and the mechanical answer, by Didier Newman.
I read most of the first chapter. I have to say the very first sentence is a less than an up-to-date premise, verging on false. The rest seemed a rambling musing without any clear claims or evidence cited. Put bluntly, I didn't grok his arguments.
Perhaps you can elucidate based on your complete reading.
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@Tom,
Is there really disagreement? I have been making the case all along that, so far as biology is concerned, Homo sapiens is destined to go extinct just as any other species.
But extinction does not necessarily lead to the end of a genus. There have been numerous previous species of Homo that have gone extinct but the underlying adaptability of the genus seems quite robust, having produced a species that is able to inhabit nearly every nook and cranny on the planet (except Antarctica) even before technology as we know it. All of the paleo-anthropological evidence points in this direction.
My conjecture (science fiction if you will) is that, given the evidence to date, our species, making it through a bottleneck will go extinct but before doing so give rise to a new (or even several new) species that will be more fit for that future environment. Mankind as we have known ourselves (and failed to understand ourselves adequately) will be gone, replaced by a "better" version of the genus. My further conjecture (science fiction) is that what that means is a species that is much more cooperative, empathetic, and communicative than our current form. Those traits will be selected for because it is cooperation and integration that has ALWAYS in the past been the solution to survival in a radically different environment and the emergence of new organization. Since this has been the pattern in the past evolution of life and supra-life on this planet (as we are now coming to understand) it seems perfectly reasonable to me that it will be the pattern of the future as well.
Now I make no claims whatsoever that this is guaranteed, only that it is at least as likely an outcome as the complete extinction scenario for Homo. For those who choose to believe (and it can only be in the realm of belief since we've never run this experiment before) that the state of the environment will get so bad that essentially no life forms comprised of more than a few cells will be able to survive, then, of course, no other conclusion than total extinction is warranted. My own view is based on the results of prior die-off events and the resulting post-die-off radiation of biodiversity (c.f. The P-Tr Event). After every such event the new Earth environment was quite different from the prior state. Those species that retained the greatest level of adaptivity and evolvability made it through to give rise to wonderful new biota.
So, I argue, the evidence so far suggests a more positive outcome than ultimate gloom-and-doom. In the end it is all speculation, of course. But I have to say, I think my scenario gives us hope that whatever else may come, the representation of sentient life on this planet could very well go on and thus provide a chance for wonderful things yet to come. That is an idea that can motivate positive work in the here and now. I would admit, it is what keeps me going.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | November 29, 2013 at 11:00 AM
No, nothing recent from my end George.
I'm a Proof is in the Pudding sorta guy. When somebody creates a self-replicating organism from just organic substrates, I will sit up and take notice.
Has anyone done such a thing yet and I missed it?
Until that has been accomplished, you just make a Leap of Faith that it can be. It is just a belief system George.
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | November 29, 2013 at 11:02 PM
@RE,
Perhaps a lot has been going on that you have missed! Such as synthetic genomics. Or look at RNA world.
No one has created a self-replicating bug just by throwing a bunch of organic stuff into a bottle and sparking electricity in it. But they have created replicating bugs/yeasts with artificially constructed genomes. They have demonstrated the effectiveness of ribozymes in protein synthesis. Most of the pieces of an extremely complex puzzle are in place.
Don't you think you should take a look at the literature before discounting something just because you have not seen some final product that you judge as the only viable demonstration?
In any case, does the elimination of this one claim invalidate my post?
George
Posted by: George Mobus | November 30, 2013 at 09:04 AM
I'm aware of Craig Venter's work. Lander's also. :)
Thing is, creating a synthetic genome is a Sentience directed process, aka it takes Homo Sapiens in a laboratory with fabulous Oil Age materials and equipment to do it. It doesn't occur randomly or spontaneously.
To make a thermodynamic type argument, like using the analogy of the spontaneous organization of a Tornado or Cyclonic Storm as Paul did, you have to show this can occur without directed action by an already sentient being, us.
Not only do you not have any demonstration of how this can occur, far as I know (you will correct me I am sure if I am wrong) there is not even a proposed mechanism for such a spontaneous self-organization of just DNA itself, forget about the pairing with RNA and protein coding issues.
The biggest Leap of Faith is in the Information Coding. What Venter is doing is taking ALREADY KNOWN 3 base pair sequences which code for specific amino acids and creating an artificial genome out of it.
How did that coding come to pass spontaneously on a thermodynamic level? Propose a mechanism for that. Inquiring minds want to know. :)
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | November 30, 2013 at 02:31 PM
@RE,
The answers you seek are in the reading list I provided. I think you should take a look.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | November 30, 2013 at 02:52 PM
I took a look George.
The RNA hypothesis is an interesting one, but far as I could find there was no explanation of how the coding could occur spontaneously.
Rather what I did find that there is dispute over whether the RNA could have held together or polymerized in the absence of energy activation from ATP.
""Molecular biologist's dream"
"Molecular biologist's dream" is a phrase coined by Gerald Joyce and Leslie Orgel to refer to the problem of emergence of self-replicating RNA molecules, as any movement towards an RNA world on a properly modeled early Earth would have been continuously suppressed by destructive reactions.[47] It was noted that many of the steps needed for the nucleotides formation do not proceed efficiently in prebiotic conditions.[48] Joyce and Orgel specifically referred the molecular biologist's dream to "a magic catalyst" that could "convert the activated nucleotides to a random ensemble of polynucleotide sequences, a subset of which had the ability to replicate".[47]
Joyce and Orgel further argued that nucleotides cannot link unless there is some activation of the phosphate group, whereas the only effective activating groups for this are "totally implausible in any prebiotic scenario", particularly adenosine triphosphate.[47] According to Joyce and Orgel, in case of the phosphate group activation, the basic polymer product would have 5',5'-pyrophosphate linkages, while the 3',5'-phosphodiester linkages, which are present in all known RNA, would be much less abundant.[47] The associated molecules would have been also prone to addition of incorrect nucleotides or to reactions with numerous other substances likely to have been present.[47] The RNA molecules would have been also continuously degraded by such destructive process as spontaneous hydrolysis, present on the early Earth.[47] Joyce and Orgel proposed to reject "the myth of a self-replicating RNA molecule that arose de novo from a soup of random polynucleotides"[47] and hypothesised about a scenario where the prebiotic processes furnish pools of enantiopure beta-D-ribonucleosides.[49]"
Still no closer to taking that Leap of Faith with you across the chasm of spontaneous life generation. ;)
RE
Posted by: Reverse Engineer | November 30, 2013 at 11:27 PM
i don't remember if george recommended the book or i heard about it somewhere else but I found
"What is Life?: How Chemistry becomes Biology"
by Addy Pross
a good read as a conceptual overview of issues around transition from inorganic matter to LIFE.
amazon link
http://www.amazon.com/What-Life-Chemistry-becomes-Biology/dp/0199641013
i found this pdf on pre-boitic chemistry and reactions screening interesting as well
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F2075-1729%2F3%2F2%2F331%2Fpdf&ei=KZ2cUozfE8X0kQfUw4B4&usg=AFQjCNGXGCFGmVYhHOxvEx8G_9uFSEf2RQ
Posted by: Aboc Zed | December 02, 2013 at 06:52 AM
Our incredibly quick complex insanity has nothing to do with the other types of nature, because ours is one of "ideology" or whatever other bad word. To include cultural complexity you're now talking structures of language, thought, perception as well as everything else.. way out of anyone's intellectual league. It's not linear stuff, so it will never be understood as linear.
When I was about 12 I asked myself whether people would look more the same or more different over time. To get into that we're talking about not just evolutionary and visual preference and other aspects in individual selection and tribal extinction, but all the other factors too, and my question even wanted to keep going along without a specific endpoint. I now realize I struggled because I asked an impossible question!
And the types of narrow-mindedness ever-present here academically as well as in Internet privacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure#December) and politics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mChqQhRhwwY) will continue to fail to explain anything useful as regards to Near-Term Extinction without the whole range of spiritualistic, nihilistic, critical and analytical modes and items of discussion. Isolation or externalization, in thought, is death. Everything is The Problem. There is no simple fix. Self-preservation continues to declare itself the opposite of human species survival today.
----
(Response to someone else's comment about the state of the world)
It's not like anything much is going to happen "in time", we've been at it for so long and only saying "maybe we'll be too late" now. The penny's gotta drop sometime. People say they don't believe in climate change, as if you could pollute everything and have no consequences, no correlating patterns ever - Shanghai closed some schools and businesses recently because of the smog, they have been going beyond where people have to wear masks all day outside. These people are insane, and nobody even points it out in the mainstream. The only reason for that is money - the children now getting cancer, all through to the elderly, will yield more money after they're dead. We treat people like animals now. The farmers are ravenous wolves, like we are all ravenous wolves of the global economy. We all preach this death, unknowingly, unconscious, but we do. We do it by living, which is a message clear as any other unwritten unspoken one. We don't educate children, we show them what it means to be bullied, we set the stage for this horrific ride. It's got some nice visuals but it's complete evil underneath. Every politician in the world knows this, they don't understand it within but they know it. Every activist knows it but I'm not sure they understand. These are all things which contribute - where is the anger? Where is the support of parents, the churches, the people making these tools of oppression like video games? Where are their minds? Where is their consideration? Their mind is at the back and their isolation has the crown. Escapism is the only mental health disease in the bigger picture. Mental sickness is health for the society where a middle class needs to be terrified into keeping their jobs so they don't end up in ghettos. People should be standing up for other people in every case, but there is so much confusion that it turns again to the engineered primitive hatred, like TV is the pornography of the visual and war is the pornography of violence.
When will we raise critical thinkers that can even challenge the authority of the world they live in? Only when it becomes financially profitable in the short-term. Humanity can do anything in theory, man is fragmented God - but not under the tight grip of the worship of money, with our high priests we watch from our TV caves talking about when there might or might not be a problem if we upset the gods of the financial system. In reality, everything is a system, but human beings are frightfully avoidant of this inside our well-programmed culture of fear.
This is far more than a violent conflict being played out in isolation, on some imaginary battlefield where oil companies are one/the end of it. This is everywhere. Earth is the battlefield, in a vast universe of possibility. Change doesn't happen until a need arises. While people are placated by the system, the only thing that will happen is this shaky voice of the scientist in journalist-padded-and-prepared articles telling you the world might end if we continue to be happy with this world. Human beings can't stop needing to be happy. There is nothing clearer than the fact we're already completely fucked. Genocide is one partial solution and in fact inevitable to continue the Western way of life anyway - it WILL happen, these people WILL be murdered "either way". But life in this universe follows a very scientific chain of cause and effect: the most likely thing BY FAR is that we keep to the comfortable, known process of human life. Any true, any serious and mature and non-emotional solution to The Problem now includes a complete reinvention of what human life is. Full stop. The seas will rise for thousands of years. The climate will burn the plants from the enormous self-perpetuating "myth" called thermodynamics involving present mass methane releases.
And we think we have an answer - it's a very $$$$$$$ *maybe* maybe.
And so we come back around, as our brains are structured, to our own self-preservation in this irrational existence. The ingrained individualistic teachings of our world draw us to say that we might as well enjoy "this" while it lasts. And you'd be making a very scientific decision for yourself there.
[Moderator edit: removed offensive language - first warning.]
Posted by: Gavin Taylor | December 12, 2013 at 06:04 PM
I'm not sure what to call it, but here's part of the Illuminati's mathematical explanation for the Big Bang and black holes, moving towards a true TEO achievable today:
Hyperreality - Hockney, Mike (749.25KB)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/88fkrn
The Noosphere - Hockney, Mike (1.74MB)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/a9s1qg
Julian Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness (2.98MB)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/froat4
also see
http://armageddonconspiracy.co.uk
Posted by: Gavin Taylor | December 12, 2013 at 06:12 PM
If we're truly Questioning Everything, then we should also be aware of the emotional rationalizations and escape involved. The Hope presented at the bottom of this article here for another form of life on the planet is far-fetched as soon as you take in the rising sea levels and superfast mutations. (Not to mention the psychologically suspicious item of wanting to carry on a roughly similar life form to that of our own). 150 000 years, the time we evolved in, was additionally from the base of a stable climate and ecological platform, the land of which we've replaced almost half of (http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0520-olson-biosphere-conservation.html). The trees are rotting from the inside on account of pollution which has an additional 30-40 year lag after our machines stop, and it's trees that provide for example a basic role of nurturing insects.
There are other points to go to from here, personally, spiritually. (And that, in some sense, is what guymcpherson.com has become about). Did you know, the universe is made of mathematics? It means what we are, this "life force", can never die. The universe is actually immortal, and the Big Bang was a particular spatial type of "life force". There was something just as powerful behind it, mathematics is very clear about this. There are people in this world that know far more, and I sort of wish I was one of them. There are also other civilizations, other lifeforms in this universe, that will survive because they didn't have sociopaths or the petrodollar or any need to control each other at all, weren't isolated with no guidance from other species or nations or civilizations. Everything that happened to the human world, which begins and ends nowhere in particular, is wholly specific to parameters like the size of the Earth, the amount of water and oil. We act out such simple things in light of this, like geopolitics i.e. war for oil another country has, which is ridiculously silly and primitive when you zoom out. We truly are a lot more complex even in our bodies than all of this, and we are laying claim to a heritage much richer than our fantasy world of human dramas - there's just so much to love and respect about the universe and its immense power.
Some videos like this can really change your day sometimes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu5oaty0uJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irOsHLay9X8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbWWT3X8Ebo&list=PLHLAJCWpWqEka1Vk5EuBVnQE_6-qyAP-K
Posted by: Gavin Taylor | December 12, 2013 at 06:36 PM
For a picture of the smog:
http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-government-tries-to-spin-smog-as-a-healthy-benefit--and-aid-to-national-defense-174649885.html
Posted by: Gavin Taylor | December 12, 2013 at 07:15 PM
If traditional evolutionism is correct, why then would our consciousness be such a wonderful and misunderstood enigma? Wouldn't we have evolved as other mammals have, only needing the essentials of life? No other creature has expanded on their technology as humans have. It seems absurd to imagine a chimpanzee driving a BMW while talking to a business associate on a cell phone. Isn't this what evolution is suggesting? That we came from the "animal kingdom" and we've "evolved" from nothing?
Why are we so inventive and complex? Why do we care so much why we're here? If we humans are so rudimentary as evolution suggests, why are we so different from other species of Earth? Opposable thumbs! A larger brain! Did we really need these things to survive? Did these genetic mutations give us a REAL advantage over other species? Were they necessary developments for progress?
My point is.. What's the point?
If evolution is correct, then we are all just a bunch of dumb apes chasing our receded tails.
It seems there's more to the story than that. What makes us so incapable of satisfaction? Why do we need more when we have enough? The only other organisms that behave as we do are viruses. Reproducing past the limits of our own sustainability. Destroying our host planet by leeching off its abundance. Our overpopulation and insatiable appetites are what's eventually going to be our undoing.
There may be (and I'm hopeful you're right, George) a sort of sapience that's going to be the knight in shining armor whom will take our genotype past its current parasitic installation. It won't be over night.
The powers that be ($$$) will resist with every effort, the evolution into a truly harmonious relationship with Earth. Maybe, we're searching in the wrong timeline. The wrong "trajectory". Just because we're taught something in school, it doesn't make it factual. I should say, just because we're NOT taught something in school, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
There seems to be a lot of discourse regarding lost civilizations and lost "higher" technologies. All of which seem to be ignored by the current academia.
If all of Earth were a lobby in a building, I would yell out, "WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?". No one knows! We really are the blind leading the blind. No wonder why we're in the toilet.
Posted by: Christian Mobus | December 15, 2013 at 04:30 PM